Post navigation

Musings (Ramblings) On Why We Lost

This piece went by among many others on election night, but I think it is worthy of calling out for attention. I was working at MSNBC and had been thinking about this all day. I put it up about 8:30 Eastern time.

The details behind those blurbs are available at the link. I think the really important stealth GOTV effort was the Chamber’s operation within businesses — there’s an unconscious intimidation factor when your employer asks you to do something. And there’s loyalty, group dynamics like acceptance…

I think this is one of many factors.

Message (lack of) was the most important, in my opinion. Kerry just didn’t have a message. And then they would suddenly come up with some message and use it for about a week and drop it and move on to a new one. The Bush campaign (actually the infrastructure of “conservative movement” organizations that underlies and controls The Party now…) had their message ready maybe two years before the election. They pounded out the same message every day. The message on the last day of the campaign was the same as on the first day.

AM radio as a 24-hour-7-day ever-ongoing Republican Party advertisement/Democrat-bashing machine was a crucial factor. Ask any marketing person the value of having all the stations relentlessly broadcasting your message. It sinks in.

There’s one other major factor that I haven’t seen very much written about, which I’ll be writing about soon. This is the massive Republican “insfrastructure” effort, consisting of the think tanks, supposedly “independent” non-profit organizations, etc. These organizations are supposed to be non-partisan but actually spend all of their time engaged in activities to promote the Republican Party. This is a huge multi-billion dollar effort that goes on OUTSIDE of the election cycle, while aiming it’s entire effect at the election process. This effort goes on full-time, all the time, and it is long-term. The book The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America sums up this process in a passage describing the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation as long-term intellectual and short-term legislative-focused operations respectively:

“This allows for a two-pronged assault on liberal orthodoxy. The AEI softens up the liberal establishment with long-range bombing; Heritage then sends in the ground troops to capture the territory and convert it into a conservative fief.”

More on that later, but I think this is a major, largely-unrecognized factor in the last election.

Update – Jeeze, I left out something important. About a year ago I was at a presentation by Ellen Malcolm of ACT where she said the plan was to use the Media Fund’s ads to make the election close in the swing states, and the GOTV effort to tip the scales. Well, this brings to mind the Republican strategy — use lies and smears to make the election close, then use voter suppression and intimidation to drive it home. Like how Ohio Democratic precincts did not get enough voting machines, and had four-hour lines, while Republican precincts had 10-minute waits.